A Danish pole is a circus

Circus

A circus is commonly a travelling company of performers that may include clowns, acrobats, trained animals, trapeze acts, musicians, hoopers, tightrope walkers, jugglers, unicyclists and other stunt-oriented artists...

 prop, consisting of a wood

Wood

Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many trees. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression...

en pole about 4 metres long and with a 5 cm diameter. It is fastened to a turnable base on the bottom and to a rope

Rope

A rope is a length of fibres, twisted or braided together to improve strength for pulling and connecting. It has tensile strength but is too flexible to provide compressive strength...

 on top. The rope can be slackened, causing the pole to hang at an angle and permitting the artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

s to swing the pole around the base and do acrobatics on it while it turns. The rope can also be tightened, causing the pole to stand directly up in the air and allowing the artists to do more traditional pole acrobatics.

History

The Danish pole is a relatively new circus prop, invented by the Danish artist Anders Jensen Astrup.

It has been used in at least two contemporary circus

Contemporary circus

Contemporary circus, or nouveau cirque , is a genre of performing art developed in the later 20th century in which a story or a theme is conveyed through traditional circus skills. Animals are rarely used in this type of circus, and traditional circus skills are blended with a more character-driven...

 shows: 99% Unknown by Cirkus Cirkör

Cirkus Cirkör

Cirkus Cirkör is a Swedish circus company, and is today Scandinavia's leading performing circus company within the art form of contemporary circus. Cirkus Cirkör has toured the world with a number of successful and praised circus shows...

 and Roundabout by Nova Exit.